Medical research has changed
how doctors diagnose conditions for the better. Read this Spotlight feature to
find out about the top three “medical conditions” that healthcare professionals
no longer recognize as such.
Throughout history — both recent and distant — doctors have
made many mistakes.
In
some cases, they meant well, but they did not yet have the knowledge or
technology to assess a person’s health condition correctly.
In
other cases, however, they diagnosed non-existent medical conditions or
disorders as a means of backlash against social outliers.
Some
“conditions” that we will discuss in this Spotlight feature, such as “bicycle
face,” may sound amusing, while others, such as dysaesthesia aethiopica, may
sound scary.
But
all of these fabricated “conditions,” and especially the fact that some doctors
and members of the public took them very seriously at the time, likely had a
substantial adverse effect on the lives of the people who received a diagnosis
for one of them.
1.
Bicycle face: ‘A physiognomic implosion’
“The
cycling season will be coming on soon, and there is every reason to suppose
that more people than ever will take advantage of it — women especially.” This
is the first sentence of an article called “The dangers of cycling,” published
by Dr. A. Shadwell in 1897, in the National Review.
Allegedly,
this doctor coined the expression “bicycle face” to describe a pseudo medical
condition — with mainly physiological symptoms — that affected women cyclists
in the early days of cycling in the 1800s. In his article, Shadwell claimed
that this “condition” caused a “peculiar strained, set look,” as well as “an
expression either anxious, irritable, or at best stony” in the rider.
Both
men and women could develop bicycle face, though women were implicitly more
affected by it since the condition could ruin their faces and their complexions,
and thus make them less desirable.
This
condition was also a particular result of riding too fast and too far, giving
free rein to what Shadwell implied was an unhealthful compulsion.
“A
vice […] peculiar to the bicycle,” Shadwell wrote, “is that the ease and
rapidity of the locomotion tempt to over-long rides by bringing some desirable
objective within apparent reach.”
“Going
to nowhere and back is dull, going to somewhere (only a few miles farther) is
attractive; and thus many are lured to attempt a task beyond their physical
powers,” he argued.
In
her book, The Eternally Wounded Woman, Patricia Anne Vertinsky also
cites sources describing “bicycle face” in women as a “general focusing of all
the features toward the center, a sort of physiognomic implosion.”
However,
while this condition appealed to anyone who wanted to discourage cycling,
especially for women, it did not last for long. Even at the time, some medical
professionals debunked this and similar notions surrounding the alleged threats
that cycling posed to health.
For
example, according to an article in an 1897 issue of the Phrenological
Journal, Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, a female physician from the United
States, explained that cycling poses no threat to women’s health.
“[Cycling] is not injurious to any
part of the anatomy, as it improves the general health. […] The painfully
anxious facial expression is seen only among beginners and is due to the
uncertainty of amateurs. As soon as a rider becomes proficient, can gauge her
muscular strength, and acquires perfect confidence in her ability to balance
herself and in her power of locomotion, this look passes away.”
Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson
2.
Female hysteria: ‘A nervous disease’
The
fake mental condition that researchers have referred to as “female hysteria”
has had a long and fraught history. It has roots in mistaken ancient beliefs,
such as that in the “wandering womb,” which alleged that the uterus could “go
wandering” through the female body, causing mental and physical problems.
Share on PinterestDoctors used to
think that women were more prone to hysteria, a nebulous mental illness.
In
fact, the term hysteria derives from the Greek word “hystera,” which means
“womb.” Yet, female hysteria became a much more prominent concept in the 19th
century when the neuropsychiatrist Dr. Pierre Janet began to study psychiatric
— and alleged psychiatric — conditions at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris,
France, in the 1850s.
Janet described
hysteria as “a nervous disease” characterized by “a dissociation of
consciousness,” which causes a person to behave in extreme ways or to feel very
intensely. Other famous contributors to the field of medical science, such as
Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer, continued to build on these initial
concepts throughout the late-19th and the 20th centuries.
Little
by little, a complex image of this nebulous mental condition emerged.
Typically, doctors diagnosed women with hysteria, as they considered women more
sensitive and easily influenced.
A
hysteric woman might exhibit extreme nervousness or anxiety but also
abnormal eroticism. For this reason, in 1878, doctors invented and first
started to use vibrators on their patients, believing that this — often
enforced — stimulation could help cure hysteria.
It
took a long time for doctors to give up on hysteria as a valid diagnostic, and
they kept changing their minds. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) did
not include hysteria in their first Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I), which appeared in 1952.
However, the “condition” made an appearance in the DSM-II in
1968, and finally left the stage of psychiatry for good in 1980 when the APA
published the DSM-III.
Instead,
the APA replaced this elusive “condition” that aimed to encompass too many
symptoms with an array of distinct psychiatric conditions, including somatic
symptom disorder (previously “somatoform disorder”) and dissociative disorders.
3.
Dysaesthesia aethiopica: ‘A hebetude’
Nineteenth-century
medicine did not just “target” women, however. Slavery was still widespread in
the U.S. throughout the first half of the 19th century, and some doctors made
victims of slavery also victims of scientific racism.
Dr.
Samuel Adolphus Cartwright, who practiced medicine in the states of Mississippi
and Louisiana in the 19th century, was guilty of inventing several “medical
conditions” that made the lives and situations of enslaved people even worse.
One
of these “conditions” was dysaesthesia aethiopica, a fictitious mental illness
that allegedly rendered slaves lazy and mentally unfit. Cartwright described this
“condition” as a “hebetude [lethargy] of mind and obtuse sensibility of body.”
Dysaesthesia
aethiopica was supposed to render enslaved people less likely to follow orders
and make them sleepy. It also supposedly led to the development of lesions on
their skin, for which Cartwright prescribed whipping. The lesions were, most
likely, the result of violent mistreatment at the hands of slave owners in the
first place.
Enslaved
people, however, were not the only ones exposed to this strange “condition.”
Their owners were also likely to “catch” it if they fell into one of two
extremes: too much friendliness or too great cruelty.
Such
was the case for “[owners] who made themselves too familiar with them [enslaved
people], treating them as equals and making little to no distinction in regard
to color; and, on the other hand, those who treated them cruelly, denied them
the common necessaries of life, neglected to protect them against the abuses of
others,” according to Cartwright.
While
scientific racism has appeared repeatedly throughout history, some researchers
warn us that we are not yet entirely free of its dangers.
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